Twenty years later, and all I can say is, “I had no idea it would be like this.”
The GOP was bad enough back then — remember John Ashcroft shrouding the stone breasts of a statue so as not to be tempted, or something?
David Frum, the George W. Bush speechwriter who helped that Republican president sell fear to a traumatized nation, made an observation once.
“If conservatives become convinced that they cannot win democratically,” he predicted, “they will not abandon conservatism.
All that, and they have foot-soldiers now, shock troops dressed in their finest tac gear and armed to the last tooth.
Someone was performing the national anthem, and I caught “…gave proof through the night that our flag was still there.”
The thought came of itself, immediate and unbidden — “Not in Afghanistan, not anymore” — and I fell down the stairwell of 20 years, again. »
